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 I'm confused. The Shiny Dash Donkey mascot is a donkey, but it's not shiny.
At least the owners of Shiny Donkey have spent the time to truly make a donkey shine.
I think that this fact alone shows the divine mandate that ShinyDonkey.com holds.
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| Have a mini-debate over here -- does anyone know the correct and/or commonly used pronunciation of daemon (as in UNIX)? Is it day-mon or dee-mon? I'm a notoriously bad pronouncer of words (ulti-MAH-tum instead of ulti-MAY-tum, for instance), but I say it's dee-mon. |
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So for you entrepeneurs out there, I have the next big thing:
VirtualMarriage.com
"Live the dream, avoid the nightmare" *
You can choose one of several marriage scenarios, suffer vicariously but have no financial or emotional investment.
The internet's primary purpose may be porn, but surely its secondary purpose is this.
* Slogan courtesy of thrice married & divorced Mark P |
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 Umm, maybe it's the partisan in me, but does anyone else detect a not-so-subtle bias in this cleveland.com ad?
Mind you, this is not an ad for John Kerry or the Democratic party, it's an ad for the "Latest Election News" by cleveland.com, which is the online home of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland's largest newspaper. So apparently the breaking news is that Democrats are the brains of the political machine and Republicans are the @$$hole? |
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So, who's up for seeing the new Spidey movie this week? We can do the crazy fanboy thing and see it Tuesday at 12:01 am, but I vote for an evening showing on Wednesday.
And yes, I know that through some miracle of time and space, somehow Blearns has already seen it -- so no spoilers, guy. |
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Marc Sumerak's first issue of Guardians is arriving soon, Mile High Comics has a
Guardians #1 Preview with full colors & lettering. Congratulations on issue 1, Marc -- may there be many more to come! |
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| Matt dissed some StringBuilder code I'd written and it got me thinking about just how efficient string concatenation is w/ the various common approaches. I started a thread on microsoft's C# forum yesterday and got some great responses. |
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Using .NET's Directory Services to challenge Email Addresses?
[reply] [10 comments]
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06/24/04 08:25 AM EST
posted by alex email |
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I know Jerry works with this and I figure a few others might be able to chime in. I am working with DirectoryServices in hopes of challenging the Exchange Server with an email address to determine if it is 1. valid, and 2. belongs to a given user. I think I will be able to find it with further research, but would love some help from people who already know how to best perform this task... Anyone, Anyone?
Also with CDOEXM Nevermind, not installed and can't work |
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| Shiny Donkey now has TWO XML feeds, courtesy of Matthew. The first is "feed.xml", which gives recent threads & the total # of comments. The second is "recentblogfeed.xml", which gives recent threads AND replies. I'll update the template soon with links to both. |
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Yah0o Says "Eff j00" to Trillian
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06/24/04 05:59 AM EST
posted by nate web |
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| I could just repost the entire blog entry from Kooshmoose but I think I'll just add a link to it instead. |
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I shed a single tear in honor of greatness
[reply] [7 comments]
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06/23/04 12:36 PM EST
posted by alex email |
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 Can I just say how brilliant this BOTD is, I mean it is simply brilliant!!! Subtle in the similar scenery however slightly changed to reflect a very happy character, putting on a show for everyone's amusement, however, the primary intended audience is walking away in the background, immune to the effects of the sad little show. Again... Simply Brilliant. |
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From msdn:
"In Visual C# you can document the code you write using XML. C# is the only programming language in Visual Studio .NET with this feature. For details on creating an XML file with documentation comments, see the following topics."
I guess VB developers just write comments directly on the monitor with their crayons. Though when you think about it, how valuable would their "Ga boo ga bee" comments be anyway... |
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| I always assumed ADO stood for Advanced Data Objects or Access Data Objects, but apparently it stands for ActiveX Data Objects??? Has "ActiveX" has gone the way of .NET, so that it doesn't actually mean anything and is tossed around in marketing? |
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Tragic 9/11 Commission could have been avoided, sources say
[reply] [2 comments]
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06/21/04 06:15 PM EST
posted by jake |
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WASHINGTON, DC—According to key members of the Bush Administration, the tragic proceedings of the 9/11 commission, which devastated the political lives of numerous government officials, could have been averted with preventive action in 2002 and 2003.
"A few adept legislative maneuvers could have saved the reputations of hundreds," President Bush's counterterrorism chief Fran Townsend told reporters Monday. "Had we foreseen the dangers of the commission's deceptively simple requests, we could have spared dozens of victims from the shocking, public mangling of their careers."
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| Alex has been promising a .NET rich text box for months, but that .NET developer who always takes hideous photos has beat him to it. The textbox is actually linked to FROM that page, but I wanted everyone to see the picture of his books so you know which guy I'm talking about. |
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| Well well well, the tribe is at it again. ESPN is calling for them to launch a surprise attack and win the Central. They are not just one game away from the magic .500 mark and only 4 out of first. So I ask you... can it happen? I think "yes" they will reach .500 in the near future, and I think "yes" they will get to within 2 of first place, that those are all of the eggs I am putting in my basket right now. Once (if) this stuff happens, then we will assess the chances for the division. GO TRIBE!!! |
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| I've been hyping this band so much you'd think I work in their PR department, but if you haven't heard Franz Ferdinand yet, check out their LAUNCH site. |
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Another pesky reminder
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06/16/04 09:14 AM EST
posted by JER email web |
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Just a reminder that today is Special Character Wednesday, featuring the first appearance of Nick as "Punkass Kid Nick", equipped with his solid gold butterfly knife.
And Kearns, since I know how much you LOVE Bull of the Day, I have a special wedding tribute planned for you sometime in the next week. Watch this space for more details. |
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SPAM, who are Ad Wizards who came up with this stuff?
[reply] [2 comments]
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06/16/04 08:21 AM EST
posted by alex email |
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A quick look through the SPAM that I have received this morning and I am left with the following titles of emails:
- splatter your mother with semen!
- Fwd: All Drugs Here. V1codi/n # v1a...
- AlQaida in your pants
- is your boyfriend happy with your girth?
- FW: M[o]rtgage Application and 5 Ad[U]lt DVDs FREE
- Blooooooock Spaaaaam not Pooooooorn
- stop feeling guilty about peeping? with loins
Now, I have to ask, WTF? Who comes up with this stuff. Is it someone's job to come up with the most ridonkulous things possible for email titles? I mean seriously, I haven't gotten an email from Uncle Splooge lately, but the porno ones are even worse. The selection above is all mild content. The inventive sexual implications I see in some of subjects of the porno emails is amazing. I just want to know who does this stuff. I want to meet the guys and girls responsible for it.
Oh, and their grammar is horrible. |
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SPs and Caching Execution Plans
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06/16/04 07:07 AM EST
posted by Matthew email web |
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| Since this is something that we have been concerned with/discussing recently. Go here to read the article by Kimberly Tripp. Kimberly Tripp, whom is referred to as the SQL Server Goddess is one of the folks over at www.sqlskills.com which I have pointed you at in the past. |
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| This guy knows some stuff about png...I don't know very much about image formats other than that you can get lossless compression form PNG. So go read or go to the PNG Home Page. Consequently this is posted because JER is trying to reduce the ShinyD Page weight. |
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I was reading SQL Puzzles & Answers and came across a great example of why I love this book.
Our little restaurant business extends lines of credit to popular customers and stores accounts receivable in the "FriendsOfPepperoni" table like so:
custid int
billdate date
amt double
There is no primary key, this is just an "old fashioned journal file, done as a SQL table."
Management wants to know how this line of credit experiment is working out, so our job is to create a report summarizing what each customer owes for 0-30 days, 31-60 days, 61-90 days and 90+.
My immediate thought was to write 4 queries with a derived "age" column and connect them with a UNION operator, like so:
SELECT custid, '0-30 days' AS age, SUM(amt)
FROM FriendsOfPepperoni
WHERE billdate BETWEEN CURRENT_DATE AND (CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL 30 DAY)
GROUP BY custid
UNION
SELECT custid, '31-60 days' AS age, SUM(amt)
FROM FriendsOfPepperoni
WHERE billdate BETWEEN (CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL 31 DAY)AND (CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL 60 DAY)
GROUP BY custid
UNION
SELECT custid, '61-90 days' AS age, SUM(amt)
FROM FriendsOfPepperoni
WHERE billdate BETWEEN (CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL 61 DAY)AND (CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL 90 DAY)
GROUP BY custid
UNION
SELECT custid, '90+ days' AS age, SUM(amt)
FROM FriendsOfPepperoni
WHERE billdate < (CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL 90 DAY)
GROUP BY custid
ORDER BY custid, age
That query was presented as answer #1, but was followed by "This query works, but it takes a while. There must be a better way to do this in SQL-92."
And there is! Solution #2 uses the CASE expression so that instead of 4 passes over our table, we make just one (the syntax will vary slightly, depending on your SQL language):
SELECT custid,
SUM(CASE WHEN billdate BETWEEN CURRENT_DATE AND (CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL 30 DAY) THEN amt ELSE 0.00) AS age1,
SUM(CASE WHEN billdate BETWEEN (CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL 31 DAY) AND (CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL 60 DAY) THEN amt ELSE 0.00) AS age2,
SUM(CASE WHEN billdate BETWEEN (CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL 61 DAY) AND (CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL 90 DAY) THEN amt ELSE 0.00) AS age3,
SUM(CASE WHEN billdate < (CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL 91 DAY) THEN amt ELSE 0.00) AS age4
FROM FriendsOfPepperoni |
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| This Friday, I bought a new house and scanned the brochure for anyone who'd like to see it. That dark green patch on the lawn isn't mud, I just blurred out the address. |
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FREE XML and .NET code ... mmmmmm(homer drool)
[reply]
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06/09/04 10:41 AM EST
posted by Matthew email web |
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| http://www.xmlforasp.net/CodeBank.aspx?codeType=xml |
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Does anyone still respect Michael Moore? Whatever you think of his politics, the guy takes cheap shots at his opponents and then flagrantly misrepresents anything that doesn't jibe with his theme.
Michael Moore & his creative editing. |
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Nar - "I really need to be getting back into the VB"
[reply] [3 comments]
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06/09/04 09:08 AM EST
posted by alex email |
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Bull *gasp* passed this along to post on Shiny Donkey. Seems he doesn't have his username or password? Anyhow, the first line is great, and tells me all I really ever needed to know about Nar.
http://www.secretgeek.net/refactvb.asp |
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| Supporting Character Wednesday is here again with TWO new Rams. And with the all new, all better Firefox-friendly rating system, there's no excuse not to check them out here. Unless your name is Ram, in which case you're probably not interested. |
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I use SharpReader to aggregate my RSS feed subscriptions. It is really great aggregator and even has an api for developing plugins. You can download it here.
Now one of the things that I like about it is how it handles comments made to a main post. I thought this was some neat trick that SharpReader performed on its own...turns out it is part of an RSS 2.0 add-on by people over at WFW called wfw:comment and wfw:commentRss.
an example of a rss feed that uses this is any .Text blog. Here is the .Text RSS feed for a guy I work with whose stuff I really respect, Dave Donaldson. You should add the whole loudcarrot feed to your aggregator while you are at it.
JER, I don't know how you create your rss feed, but I would be happy to collaborate with you on adding something of this specification to ShinyD. |
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Ya'll just got SERVED... By Soundwave!!!!
[reply] [4 comments]
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06/08/04 07:29 PM EST
posted by alex email |
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If you like Transformers, "You Got Served" Southpark Spoof or the movie itself, Techno remix music, and Spiderman making you Gay, you will love this little link. This is simply awesome. All I can say is that I never new these two could dance so well.
http://triadfrog.home.comcast.net/ |
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Ok so using some ideas from Alex and some other things I found on the web I rewrote the paging query in a way that doesn't require any dynamic SQL. Since we aren't doing dynamic SQL there will be a single stored execution plan so that it wont have to be rebuilt for each execution.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.GetTitlesByPageTemp
(
@PerPage INT = 6,
@Page INT = 1,
@Pages INT = 1 OUTPUT
)
AS
DECLARE @LastRow INT
SET NOCOUNT ON
SET @Pages = ceiling( cast((SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Titles) as float) / @PerPage)
SET @LastRow = @PerPage * @Page
SET ROWCOUNT @LastRow
SELECT
title_id,title,type,pub_id,price,advance,royalty,ytd_sales,notes,pubdate
INTO
#titles
FROM
titles
ORDER BY title_id
SET ROWCOUNT @PerPage
select
title_id,title,type,pub_id,price,advance,royalty,ytd_sales,notes,pubdate
into
#titles_sub
FROM
#titles
ORDER BY title_id DESC
SET ROWCOUNT 0
SELECT
title_id,title,type,pub_id,price,advance,royalty,ytd_sales,notes,pubdate
FROM
#titles_sub
ORDER BY title_id
RETURN
GO
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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How fitting
[reply]
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06/08/04 08:11 AM EST
posted by alex email |
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Apparently this guy assaulted a Taco Bell Employee by throwing a Chalupa in their face. I don't know what is better, assault with a Chalupa.... or the fact that the perp's name is Christopher Lame..... Lame indeed.
http://www.wftv.com/news/3394109/detail.html |
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A few recent Shiny Donkey updates to mention:
- "Recent Bloggings" section added to give a quick view of recent posts AND replies
- Slight design changes, including new masthead & smaller primary nav
- Bull rating system for non-IE browsers available at the Bull page in each popup
Something may be broken, so please report any problems to me! |
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No Mr. Hasselhoff... Say it aint so
[reply] [1 comment]
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06/07/04 09:54 AM EST
posted by alex email |
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I guess being the biggest thing to hit Germany since the wall fell just wasn't enough for him to lay off the bottle. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=494&u=/ap/20040607/ap_en_tv/people_hasselhoff_5&printer=1
Well, at least track 6, "Hot Shot City," Is Particularly Good |
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Quote from an interview on NPR this morning:
"... So now what kind of music do you listen to on your mp3 player or walk-person..." |
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Dynamic paging and ordering stored procedure
[reply] [13 comments]
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06/06/04 06:06 PM EST
posted by alex email |
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Many of the people among our little group of programming friends use and enjoy SQL on a dialy basis (as was just stated in the post below). These same people like to tweak and test SQL to get the most performance out of it. Over the past years I have invested countless hours into researchign and building what I felt at the time was the best and most dyanamic SP for paging and ordering within the DB instead of on the page. I hate returning entire recordsets only to use 10-50 rows of 100,000 (blatently overkill on purpose... not on accident). Every time I see something that I think can work to improve the speed of a dyamic paging and ordering SP I try it. Well, doug2 has posted on his blog about his new idea... and well, it is great. Runs very fast, much faster than my current SP. There are a few shortfalls but I think they can be overcome, take a look at his post and my comment and see what you have to contribute. Together, we can make the most kickass dymaic and modular paging and ordering SP that can be implemented accross the board. Let me know what you think.
http://idledreams.net/dmoore/posts/474.aspx |
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SQL is as SQL does
[reply]
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06/06/04 02:39 PM EST
posted by Matthew email web |
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| I am working on a SQL Blog to impart some of my hard won knowledge about acquiring XML from SQLServer, and optimizing response time. Since I need to come up with an example that would not compromise my employer's data, I decided that I should just make up a database and I realized that though I have used SQL almost every day of my professional career, I have never looked up or used definite naming conventions for SQLServer databases. I began my search with a man named Joe Celko. I found out about Mr. Celko from Jerry when he pointed me at the book Joe Celko's SQL Puzzles and Answers. I found an article by Joe pointing out his top 10 pet peeves about the majority of SQL written by John Q. SQLProgrammer. Check out the article here. He also makes reference to Metadata Standards Committee, which I will continue to research and report my findings here. |
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History Repeats Itself... Just Not In France
[reply]
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06/05/04 02:23 PM EST
posted by JER email web |
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From the AP, 1 hour 29 minutes ago:
Chirac said he understood why Bush has been comparing the Iraq war to the liberation of Europe in World War II, given this weekend's celebrations. But Chirac said "it is very difficult to compare historical situations that differ because history is not repetitive." If Chirac actually meant that, he has no reason to cite lack of WMD when criticizing the war. Taking his statement to its logical end, the Iraq War was wrong because Saddam was not actively harming an opposing country. Even though Saddam gassed his people and invaded Kuwait, and was attempting to acquire weapons, he wasn't doing anything in the present, making it irrelevant.
Next time someone invades France, let 'em keep it. |
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Since it's Friday, I thought I'd share a "Freaky Friday" & boob-related post from Liquid Generation. Apparently they've posted images showing that yes, indeed, Freaky Friday star Lindsay Lohan has breast implants, and they have the scar tissue to prove it.
See the pictures here
Is it just me or does anyone else find it sad that a mildly attractive 17 year old can buy new boobs and become a "hot" star.
And another thing -- don't the high-cost boob jobs go in through the armpit or use lasers to remove under-boob scar tissue? Maybe I just invented that, but perhaps someone else with greater plastic surgery know-how can weigh in. |
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The Saddam 9/11 Connection
[reply]
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06/03/04 01:51 PM EST
posted by JER email web |
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I'm getting two conflicting stories on the whole Iraq & 9/11 issue, one from the liberal NY Times, one from the conservative National Review (see Iraq + 9/11 story here).
I don't particularly think it matters whether Iraq was involved in 9/11 -- proof of a link would not affect my opinion. I believe that the war was right for a number of reasons which I've expressed in the past. I don't base those feelings on a need for 9/11 vengeance.
I also believe that if the connection were found, the anti-war mantra would shift to the WMD issue. And if WMD were found, they would emphasize the lack of UN support -- and so on and so on.
The majority of commentators on this issue are like novelists who know the ending of a book and have to find a way to get there. Their opinions are pre-determined, so their arguments are intellectually dishonest -- which makes it very hard to observe a debate or try to sort the facts in NY Times & The National Review. |
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IL Analysis of the .NET Framework in order to find cryptic errors
[reply]
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06/02/04 07:39 AM EST
posted by jake |
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Jerry has been looking for an error for some time within one of our applications. As a C programmer, any errors generated by the operating system and not by the .NET application always lead me to believe in a problem in memory management-although I have nothing to back this up.
In short, the error is a generic hard memory fault error, from the OS, generate by our app. In reviewing IL Assembler, I realized that the looking at the IL: you can tell if and where a non-managemend function is called. The metadata system and CIL compilation engine is responsible for ensuring 1.)Type integrity 2.) GC and 3.)Exception Management.
I of course called Jerry, to discuss where we had unmanaged code (a COM call for example) and we realized that the .NET framework is not fully managed: examples are the file I/O system: it calls Kernel32.dll (wrapped) and executes the embedded methods. If there is an error in the handeling of wrapped function in .NET (System.Management) for example, how do you fix this? How do you find this. So my thought is this: compile IL and C# side by side and walk through the DEBUG. How: (this may not work)
1. Compile C# program in debug mode.
2. Disassemble it using /SOURCE option; the original C# source lines will be added to Assembler code as comments.
3. Assemble the .il with /DEBUG option to new EXE or DLL.
4. Run it under debugger. The debugger will show you the ILAsm source with original C# source embedded as comments.
walk through the code and find an exception not caught in C# but you can see the IL exception area: then write in the C# an inline IL statement to handel the exception (Very much like writing C or shellcode in C++ to handel advanced memory errors). I realise this is not the most efficent way, but it is perhaps the only way until Microsoft fixes the broken portions of the framework. Thoughts? |
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Something Positive
[reply]
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06/02/04 06:36 AM EST
posted by JER email web |
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This site tends to be awfully silly, but I'm taking a small detour to mention something important.
If you haven't set aside funds for charity this year, or if you've just gotten a nice refund check, I recommend making a small donation to Operation Iraqi Children. Many of the schools in Iraq have been rebuilt and refurbished, but they don't have any supplies. So while it's nice that kids can use a toilet and sit in a room with windows, they often don't have basic supplies like pencils & paper.
And if empathy for the children of Iraq isn't motivating you, the organization was co-founded by Gary Sinise (Lieutenant Dan). Surely you owe him $20 for his hilarious portrayal of an astronaut in Mission to Mars. |
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| Heh, I just can't believe that Asjoure (as far as I know) is the only one from the website's main page photo that is still employed there.... And that website is only about a year and a half old. |
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Shiny Donkey has fallen to the second page, just in front of "Farm Accident Digest's" listing. So, I have tracked the Shiny's Progress on Google and have come up with one way I think the ranking will greatly improve.
The ranking is highest when the words Shiny Donkey appear in the first blog entry multiple times. I think if you put an intro paragraph on the page that makes mentioned of the words Shiny Donkey several times, even sometimes linking to the main page, prior to the first blog, but in the same line, the ranking will improve. Give it a shot and see over a few days. |
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| Followup: Bull has directed me to Bug Me Not, a repository of usernames & passwords to bypass the free reg. sites. |
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